


quiet in the storm

by ectobaby



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectobaby/pseuds/ectobaby
Summary: It's raining again.(Or, Dirk attempts to calm the storm raging in John's head. It goes okay. A three-star review at best.)
Relationships: John Egbert/Dirk Strider
Comments: 32
Kudos: 165





	quiet in the storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rieunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rieunn/gifts).



> for someone very dear to me.

It’s raining again.

This isn’t something you’d normally take note of. Weather happens. Daily. Unless it’s to your detriment, you don’t really care what the atmosphere on Earth-C decides to do or when it decides to do it. You’re Dirk Strider, a literal god. A little rain can’t stop you from cooping yourself up for weeks in your workshop, hunched over half-finished projects and hunks of metal. Lightning? Bring it on. You’ll Frankenstein this bitch.

But, looking closely, you find a keyword hidden in the narrative. A subliminal message.

_Normally._

Normally, you wouldn’t notice.

Today? You’re concerned with the storm brewing outside your house.

You stand on your porch, staring up at the dark sky while your hair fights a losing battle against the turbulence. It’s hard to see, but you can still make out the black clouds towering over the horizon and how the trees nearly bend in half with each gust of wind. It’s been gradually getting worse for days; a light drizzle that turned into a heavy shower with accompanying thunder and lightning. A five-star fuckin’ recipe for a natural disaster.

And you know the chef.

Sighing, you flashstep to John Egbert’s front porch.

* * *

It’s worse here, but you figured it would be. The porch swing is about to fly off its handles. The windows are rattling like maracas. Beneath your feet, the entire house creaks and groans and you feel like you’re about five seconds away from some weird _Wizard of Oz_ shit.

You barge in before you blow away.

“Hey,” you say to no one. The living room is empty. You figured that too. Still, feels impolite not to announce yourself.

Inside it’s eerily quiet and the farther in you wander, the more stagnant it gets. Makes sense, you suppose. The eye of the storm tends to be like that.

You walk down the hall, knocking idly against the wall—just a light tap here and there to alert him of your presence in his space. Give him enough time to hear you coming and do something about it if he really does want to be alone.

Before you get to his bedroom door, you hear a _crunch_. The sound comes from beneath your shoe and slowly you lift your foot to examine what the fuck it is you’ve just stepped on. Hopefully not his glasses—oh. A framed photo. You bend over and pick it up, brushing away the bits of splintered glass. It’s of John and his dad. John doesn’t look any older than ten; there’s a gap between his teeth and his cowlick looks too big for his head. Cute kid. You look up to good ole’ Dad Egbert and…

Well.

That’s unsettling.

His facial features are _there_ but they’re distorted and blurry. The pipe in his mouth and the hat on his head are the only things rendered properly. With a pang in your chest, you realize that John alchemized this. You also realize that means he doesn’t remember what his dad looks like.

Damn. 

You can’t begin to fathom how that might feel. All you ever had were pictures of your bro.

Plucking the photo out of the frame, you fold it up and stick it in your pocket. Not for any weird reasons, you just don’t think he needs the reminder.

You step over the glass to knock on his door exactly once before letting yourself in. In the dark, you can vaguely make out a human-shaped lump. Particularly, a John-shaped lump.

“Hey,” you say again. “It’s me. Glenda the fuckin’ Good Witch, floating down in a big pink bubble. All in full technicolor.”

“Go away, Dirk.”

"You killed my sister, prepare to die."

"Wrong movie, dumbass." John lifts from his cocoon of blankets. Only the silhouette of him is visible but you can tell he's a mess. "Did you want something? Or did Jake just make you watch _Wizard of Oz_ and now you’ve come over to flex your new super lame movie references?"

“No. I have just a limited number of pop culture references in the field of tornados.”

“Twister is a classic,” he says.

“Debatable. I should have gone for Sharknado but then there’s the dilemma of which one.”

“Shark…nado? Are you telling me there’s a movie about—No, hey! Don’t turn the lights on.” You drop your hand from the light switch. Across the room, John breathes out a sigh of relief. “So, the tornado is—”

“Full of sharks? Yeah.”

“And there’s multiple?”

Sometimes you forget you’re not from the same timeline and John never got to experience watching a shark-infested tornado wreak havoc like some nightmare-fueled acid trip. To be honest, it’s all laughs until you’re a thirteen-year-old boy alone in the middle of the ocean. Then it becomes a new paranoia to keep you up at night.

You sit on the edge of the bed. It’s not awkward. John thinks it is, you can tell by how he slowly inches the blanket to cover his chest even though he’s wearing a shirt. Like you’re some wayward vagabond showing up to seduce him in the midst of an emotional meltdown. Your pride is wounded, ironically speaking. You didn’t come here to put the moves on him—not that you haven’t considered it—and you certainly didn’t come here to discuss the finer details of tornado-centric movies. That’s more of a Jake thing.

You cut right to the chase. “What’s wrong?”

John stiffens, drawing up his knees to his chest, hugging them and resting his chin in the dip. He’s not looking at you, but you take off your shades so that you can look at him. Even in the dim, gray dark, you can tell he’s been crying. His eyes are puffy and swollen, the thinnest shine on his cheeks when he moves his head. You’d wager he hasn’t brushed that bird’s nest he calls hair in days, all his thick curls sticking up in a hundred different cowlicks. A quick survey of his room tells you he probably hasn’t left his bed either.

“It’s nothing,” he lies.

“Bullshit.”

“Just go away, Dirk.”

You don’t go away. You stay stubbornly sitting right on the edge of his bed with your hands clasped in your lap. If John wants you to leave, he has that power. He can wisp you up and deposit your ass in the middle of nowhere. He can wisp _himself_ away, turn into a violent wind, and disappear right before your eyes. The fact that you’re both still here speaks volumes.

Patiently, you wait for him to come to terms with that.

“I’m just…” John pauses to stare vacantly at the wall, probably flipping through a Rolodex of patented excuses, all of which you’ve heard before. He settles on, “I’m just tired.”

At least that’s believable, you suppose. Despite being in a bed, he _does_ look exhausted, but you know that’s not what he means.

“Tired of what?”

John huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “Everything? All of this.”

That’s frustratingly vague, so you lift an expectant brow and stay silent, waiting for him to clarify.

“Okay,” he sighs. “I guess, I just feel selfish.”

Oh. Huh, okay. That throws you for a loop a bit. John’s probably one of the least selfish people you know. If this were an official ranking, he’d be low on the scale, scraping the bottom. You, however, might be leaning in closer to the top but that’s neither here nor there.

Point is—you know selfish and John Egbert isn’t that.

“Go on.”

John groans. “It’s like…I see everyone and they’re all so happy. They’ve got each other. Jane has her dad, Dave has Karkat. You have Jake.” He pauses, realizing what he’s just said and what it implies. It’s pretty common knowledge you and Jake haven’t been official in a while. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s cool. We’re still friends. For your argument, yeah, I have him.” You pause and, for no reason whatsoever, add, “Not romantically, just so we’re clear.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Anyway. Everyone has someone or something now. Before the game, everyone’s life was shit, right? You lived in the middle of the ocean. Jade and Jake lived on some secluded island. Dave’s bro was a puppet-wielding prick—uh, wait. Sorry. Is that offensive?”

“No,” you answer honestly, “I think that just about sums him up.”

Coming to terms with the fact that you’re not the splinter everyone associates with Dave’s bro took some time and deliberation. Sometimes you still wrestle with the idea, but you’re mostly confident that you aren’t. You love Dave, he’s the bro you always wanted and now you gotta work on being the same for him.

But this isn’t about you and your splinter-related trauma.

“So, everyone has something,” you recap. “I’m guessing you feel like you don’t.”

“That’s part of it. Mostly I just feel angry and jealous,” John whispers. “That’s selfish, right? I should be happy that all my friends finally have something good in their lives! But all I can do is watch bitterly from the sidelines! Then there’s another part of me that keeps saying they’re not really my friends.”

There’s a lot you want to say to that, but you also want to let him finish. Carefully, you scoot on the bed to sit next to him properly. You remember being on the ledge of the building, waiting for an epic showdown, hugging the shit out of your bro. It seemed to make Dave feel better at the time, so why not try it out now? You wrap your arm around John’s shoulder and don’t say shit about it.

Neither does he.

“They _are_ your friends,” you say.

Obvious, maybe. But it’s important to you that John hears it.

“I know,” he sighs, “I’m not doubting that they all care about me. It’s more like…they aren’t _my_ friends? All my friends are dead because I messed up so badly. Everyone! Dave, Rose, Jade, my dad, Rose’s mom—even you.”

His voice is getting wobbly, but you let him talk.

“Did you know I met you before coming to Earth-C? Yeah. You were floating around in space, all glitchy, and you told me that you failed. You thought all this was your fault and then you just. Disappeared. I killed you too.”

John’s shoulders start to shake, and you pull him closer, pressing him against your side to stop the tremors. You’re not sure if it’s comforting in the way you intend, but he doesn’t pull away.

“You didn’t kill me, John,” you say. “I won’t sugarcoat this for you though. You gotta stop thinking of us as different people, separate from the ones you knew. Yeah, I’m not that glitchy handsome stranger in paradox space that you remember, but I’m still Dirk. We all played a part here. We all belong—”

The laughter you hear turns out to be a broken sob. “No. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s not—it’s not _you_ that doesn’t belong. It’s me!”

A beat of silence.

“I’m the outlier,” John insists, repeating— “It’s _me._ ”

Fuck.

Your mouth snaps shut, realization sinking in and twisting cruel fingers around your heart. Idly, you wonder if the tightness in your chest is John’s subconscious doing; if he’s the one making it hard for you to breathe. What he’s feeling right now—that isolation? That shit is core deep and damn if you can’t relate. Maybe not this particular brand but you get it. Feeling like you’re alone when there are people all around you.

Feeling different.

Self-imposed isolation that you can't seem to shake.

“I don’t feel real,” John confesses in a broken whisper. He’s looking at his hands, fingers twitching like he expects them to vanish without his permission. “I feel like I don’t belong here.”

“I get that,” you say because you’re not going to tell him he’s wrong. That’d be invalidating as hell. But you’re also not going to let it slide without some clarifications. “You’re allowed to feel that way. You’ve got all these voices in your head telling fucked up bullshit about yourself. Just because they’re in your head, doesn’t mean they’re right. The subconscious fabricates some wild shit. We tell ourselves what we want to hear, and sometimes what we want to hear is that we’re no good. The alternative to that just doesn’t feel possible and lying to ourselves is easier than acknowledging the fact that we’re not the awful things we’ve been accused of, even when it’s been us pointing the finger—or, in my case, literal splinters of myself.”

John looks at you, blinking through his tears. The lens of his glasses are all smudged up with greasy fingerprints and you’re honestly not sure how the hell he can even see. Reaching out and plucking them off his face might be considered overstepping, so you keep your hands to yourself. Sorta. Your thumb’s been rubbing along his shoulder this entire time. You’re not exactly sure when that started, but at least John isn’t shaking anymore.

“What I’m saying is, sometimes it’s easier to tell yourself that you don’t belong than to accept that you do.” You swallow, steeling yourself to drop a rare nugget of self-reflective truth. “I’m speaking from experience.”

“I _don’t_ belong though. I made a whole new timeline and planted myself in it to save my ass.”

“John. I don’t know why you’re so hung up on the details of something as trivial as timelines. You do realize that none of that matters, right? I’m from a whole other fuckin’ reality. Dave’s probably out there makin’ offshoots every time he spins his turntables for menial shit. It’s a moot point. No one gives a shit which timeline you’re from. Except you.”

He doesn’t say anything, and you don’t encourage him to. All that Strider wisdom you just spouted needs to sink in, understandably. This means you should probably shut up, but that’s never quite been your forte.

“You didn’t fail. The fact we are sitting here having this conversation is a testament to that.” You remember the photo in your pocket, the one of John and his dad. “And being upset that you lost something important to you doesn’t make you selfish. You don’t owe anyone a performance. Be upset. Be angry. But don’t blame yourself, bro.”

Outside the rain has settled into a quiet patter against the roof and windowpane. The sky doesn’t magically open up to pour in light. The birds don’t start chirping a sunny tune. Everything calms, but it doesn’t go away. You’d be concerned if it did. That’d mean John was putting on another mask and that’s not what you want.

Next to you, he sighs and leans in, melting against your side. You switch your thumb to your hand, rubbing up and down his arm, jostling him closer with each movement.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of shitty at this whole comfort thing?” John mumbles, tilting his head to rest on your shoulder. There’s a hint of a smile in his voice that eases the accusation of any venom. Light and teasing.

“Once or twice,” you answer honestly.

You turn your head to check on him and, at the same time, he decides to bury his face in your arm. The result is a mouthful of hair for your effort. Instead of complaining, you prop your yourself there, chin tucked against the crown of his head. You don’t purposely do it, but breathing in his scent is kinda unavoidable. It’s nice, in a weird way. Grounding.

“Thanks,” John says, almost too quiet to catch.

“No problem.”

The storm is far from over. There are things you know he’s not getting into, but again, you aren’t here to push him past his limits or break him. When he’s ready, you’ll listen. By now, you hope he knows that.

This isn’t the first time you’ve been here, with him.

It’s not going to be the last.

A calm settles over you both as you sit pressed together, side by side, on the bed. It’s been a long time since you’ve indulged in physical affection without it being the prelude to something much less wholesome. But if John’s feeling disconnected, disjointed from reality, you have no qualms with holding him with no expectations. It’s an easy way to remind him that he’s here. He’s real.

You get that too—the dissociative feeling that comes with the realization that you’ve fulfilled your life purpose. That stupid fucking game that’s _still_ causing emotional strife.

It’s easy for you to get lost in your head or think no one understands. Jake was never the best with social cues, especially when it came to your complicated and tumultuous psyche. He meant well but the two of you dealt with your problems in separate ways. Jake craved independence, and you craved someone to latch onto. You were an anchor and Jake was a ship trying to desperately to leave port.

But. John.

John needs something to tether him to reality, and a peculiar feeling swells in your chest when you realize that you could do that for him.

If he wanted.

Damn. Look at you go—looking too far into things. Again. What happened to _not_ being a seductive wayward vagabond? Shit. Now you’re hyper-aware of his warm breath seeping through the sleeve of your shirt.

“You good?” you ask to distract yourself.

He gives a weak shrug. “Better.”

That’s a start. Okay, your work here is probably done. For now. Earth-C didn’t build itself in a day, even if it felt like that for you. Just one more thing.

“You’re not alone,” you remind him.

And, in a way, you also remind yourself.

John lifts his head to look at you and once again, it’s a little harder to breathe. The red that lines his tear-swollen eyes really makes the blue pop. It might be a little fucked up that you notice, who knows. But damn, those are some _blue_ eyes—and they’re staring straight through you. Belatedly, you remember he can see _your_ eyes and that’s a little stressful.

Also, kind of romantic.

If this were a movie or Rose’s gay wizard fanfiction, you’d be dipping in for a kiss. But, given the circumstances, that feels hella inappropriate.

Plus, John pulls back and says, “Man. I wish I was though.”

Moment ruined.

“I can leave.” To emphasize your point, you start to slip off the bed, moving at a slug’s pace to give him ample time to catch your arm and keep you put.

Which, he does. You knew he would.

“Wait. No, uh,” John bites his lip and looks over. “You want to hang out?”

There’s a hunk of robot body half-constructed waiting for you on your workbench.

You slide back onto the bed. “Yeah, sure.”

“Think you can alchemize that shark movie you were talking about?”

“Probably,” you tell him. “Or I can do you one better.”

* * *

Halfway through the ironic cinematic masterpiece known as Ghost Shark, John grabs your hand and you let him. When the credits roll, he tells you how stupid it was. He then promptly tells you how much he loved it. You let him pick the next three and you hate them all, and you tell him as much. In lurid detail. John isn’t the least bit offended. Actually, you’re pretty sure he’s downright delighted to hear it. You end up watching two more movies, each one worse than the last.

At some point in the night, you realize that you never stopped holding his hand.

At some point in the night, you realize that you didn’t want to.

But it’s when John falls asleep on your shoulder, the quiet night air rolling in through the open window, that you realize...

Maybe you don’t want to be alone either.

**Author's Note:**

> this is really unpolished and sorta sloppy and rushed but, hey. some good ole dirkjohn emotional hurt/comfort.


End file.
